(3 out of 5 stars) The fact that OMD or rather, Andy McCluskey can do his worst and still sound reasonably good, is adequate testimony of OMD s musical competence. This disc is witness to that. It s unlikely that you ll ever bump into an OMD fan (that is, someone who s familiar with OMD s catalog beyond If You Leave ). But in the rare event that you do, there s an even slimmer chance that you ll find a fan who considers Liberator a masterful work of sonic genius. This CD lacks, among other things, the unconventional, innovative elements of Architecture and Morality, the ethereal splendor of Organisation, and most disappointingly, the emotional charge evident throughout the first half of OMD s library. Even the immediate predecessor to this disc ( Sugar Tax ) with its quasi-sobbing and desperate lyrics beared some semblance to those early gems which proved that not all synthpop bands were unsoulful, vapid white boys. To the contrary, OMD was appropriately recognized wi